The highly anticipated BarCampCanberra event happened yesterday, with a large gathering of smart and passionate folks from around Canberra, Yass, Wollongong and Sydney discussing interesting topics such as Government 2.0, social innovation, collaboration, typography, hackerspaces and more.

For those unfamiliar with the BarCamp concept:

BarCampCanberra is a free-to-attend community-run conference where anyone can come and watch, participate or present on anything they are passionate about - either something interesting they’ve been working on, an idea they’d like to present or to brainstorm the solution to a problem with a bunch of like-minded smart people

We had over 150 people registered for the event, 46 pizzas consumed, 72 bottles of water drunk (plus the additional cups and water containers) and 39 sessions including a series of 5 minute lighting talks (I love the 5 minute lighting talk format).

The event was tweeted, flickred, livestreamed and Googled waved. We were even covered in the Canberra Times (page 8 of the Sunday 7th February newspaper).

Some of my favourite quotes about BarCampCanberra comes from @dekrazee1:

Brain is still abuzz from #bcc2010. BarCamp is the techy equivalent of a day spa. Energising and invigorating. #I<3BarCamp

@ozdj:

@RazChorev Yep. Sound ROI. That $50 of fuel (and ~8hrs of travel time) got me about $500 worth of education today. #bcc2010

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The challenge is that UX is a highly multi-disciplinary field; it draws upon a number of areas such as cognitive science, psychology, industrial design, human factors, human-computer interaction, usability, accessibility, information architecture, and more. While there are numerous universities that offer degrees and units in some of the individual areas listed above (I tutored a human-computer interaction unit at one of the universities), I can’t seem to find one that draws all the elements into one degree.

So I decided to draw on the collective wisdom of the twitterverse by putting the call out on twitter for HCI related degrees. I got a number of interesting responses, which I’ve summarised here.

University of Sydney

@smperris suggested the Interaction Design and Electronic Arts (IDEA). Graduate Certificate, Graduate Diploma and a Masters degree is available.

Read more about the Interaction Design and Electronic Arts program.

University of Queensland

@viller suggested the Bachelor of Multimedia Design and Master of Interaction Design at UQ. Both have a strong user-centred design and usability focus.

University of Technology Sydney

@pixel8ted noted that the University of Technology Sydney are willing to cater curriculum to your specific needs but you will need to approach them directly. There are also short courses available which you might be able to get something tailored to your needs.

Murdoch University

@londonjustin noted that Murdoch University in Perth offers a Human-Computer Interaction unit (unit ICT325) which can also be done externally.

RMIT

@oliveChi suggested RMIT in Melbourne and Open University.
Note: Can someone provide a direct link to the appropriate course? I tried searching for it but am probably not using the correct terminology.

University of Tasmania

@stokely noted that the University of Tasmania has an HCI campus. I had a look and came across the Human Interface Technology Lab Australia. There are HIT Lab courses such as Bachelor of Computing, Human Interface Technology (HIT) Major , which has some UX elements.

Australian National University

@LindaPostniece noted that the ANU College of Engineering & Computer Science does some research in HCI but doesn’t seem to cover much teaching.

Edited: the following information was added after the original post was written.

Charles Stuart University

Charles Stuart University offers a Master of Information Studies with a specialisation in Information Architecture.

Further resources

• Information architecture courses from around the world from the IA Institute
• IxDA has an education topic which lists all the discussions around finding courses, moving into this field, etc.

Comments? Additions?

Got any additional suggestions? Have you completed one of the degrees mentioned in this blog post, or are you currently completing it? I’m interested in hearing about your suggestions and experiences. Please comment below. :)

The Hive Gallery

This is an old favourite of mine. It features a tiny gallery space and lots of hand crafted goodness. On my visit there yesterday, I even spotted some jewellery pieces from Polli. There is an interesting range of books, porcelain pieces, handmade cards, and other independent art works.

Online at: www.thehivegallery.com.au
Find it at: 25 Lonsdale Street, Braddon ACT 2612 (See The Hive on google maps)
Phone: (02) 6257 9700

Unit Concepts

Unit Concepts is surprisingly large, with a huge range of homewares, designer furniture, novelties and other types of design icon pieces. Personal favourites are the range of Pantone items, inspired by the Pantone Colour charts. There is also some children items, bags and clothes.

Find it at: 28 Lonsdale Street, Braddon ACT 2612 (See Unit Concepts on google maps)
Phone: (02) 6230 0943

Also check out: Unit Concepts from Canberra’s got style for some imagery of the shop

Pocket Monster

Cute name, cute goods. Lots of gadgets and novelties such as cool ice cube trays, Minobot designer USB flash drives, t-shirts, and more.

Find it at: 28 Lonsdale Street, Braddon ACT 2612 (See Pocket Monster on google maps)
Phone: (02) 6230 6115

Also check out: Something for the Boys: Pocket Monster from Canberra’s got style for some imagery of the shop

Bourgeois Pig

A distinctly chic shop, this is a very long narrow shop filled with jewellery pieces, bags and some clothing.

Find it at: 28 Lonsdale Street, Braddon ACT 2612 (See Bourgeois Pig on google maps)
Phone: (02) 6262 8607

Also check out: Chick boutique: Bourgeois Pig from Canberra’s got style for some imagery of the shop

Gift Pod

This newly opened shop is situated right in the city and also carries a number of cool funky gifts, such as the Mattt bags, Pantone mugs, jewellery, kids toys and clothing, etc.

Online at: www.giftpod.com.au
Find it at: Ground Floor, Canberra Centre, Bunda Street, Canberra City ACT
Phone: (02) 6262 6968

Here’s a rundown of some of the presentations. Not every session is covered.

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In conjunction with the ACT Government and Queanbeyan City Council, Apple will be holding a community e-waste recycling event on Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th of August 2009, from 9am until 4pm.

Computers and other e-waste can be dropped off at:

• Mugga Lane Resource Management Centre, Mugga Lane, Symonston
• Mitchell Resource Management Centre, Flemington Road, Mitchell
• Park n’ Ride car park, corner of Cowlishaw and Anketell Streets, Greenway
• Waste Minimisation Centre, 5 Lorn Road, Queanbeyan

All householders and non-commercial organisations can take part by bringing their e-waste (computers, laptop, monitor, scanner, printer and computer-related, peripherals, TVs, video players, stereos and mobile phones) to the drop off locations.

Note that whitegoods, overhead projectors, damaged e-waste, contaminated equipment or other hazardous waste are not accepted through this recycling program.

For more information:

• Phone Canberra Connect on 13 22 81
• Visit www.tams.act.gov.au
• Visit www.apple.com.au/environment/recycling/program - more useful information through this link

My hubby and I will be visiting Melbourne next week as I will be getting laser eye surgery. To celebrate, we are attending Dracula’s on Saturday. We have also ended up with two spare tickets which Dracula’s will not refund.

Do you know anyone who might be interested in buying these two tickets?

The details of the dinner show are as follows:

• Date: Saturday 6th of June
• Time: 6.45pm until late
• Location: 100 Victoria Street, Carlton Victoria 3053
• Price: We paid $72/head but I’m more than happy to negotiate a really good price as I need to move these tickets - please make an offer!

The ticket price includes a 3 course meal, show and a ghost train ride.

Please contact me if you’re interested.

My presentation is titled From Apples to eye surgery: designing useful user experiences and you can catch it below:

PS: Apologies for not posting a bit more of an explanation about the presentation - I’m in a rush to pack for my Gold Coast holiday!

Who presented?

As I have yet to master the art of splitting my self into two, here’s a quick run down of the talks I heard:

• David Page introduced us to the concept of the Yubikey - a usb key authentication system. It provides single or two factor authentication and is quite affordable. Catch The Yubikey presentation on slideshare.
• Rohan Mitchell shared his adventures in online business. My favourite slide from his presentation? Slide 18 The Learning Curve, which involves:
  1. Make something cool
  2. ???
  3. Profit!

  Catch the rest of his Adventures in Online Business on slideshare.

• One of the highlights was Pamela Fox’s presentation on making the google map for the Victorian bushfires. It was fascinating hearing about the solutions they came up with in the challenging environment, with key issues being the short time frames and lack of open data. It really highlighted the problems we face when data (particularly emergency data) is not made available in formats that enable reuse. Read more on Pamela’s blog post BarCamp Canberra 2: Mapping the Fires.
• Another highlight was Joseph Gentle’s presentation on Artificial intelligence. He took a complex subject and made it really easy to understand. Loved it.
• Craig Thomler took us through his experiences on blogging as a public servant - a very informative presentation.
• Linda Gehard ran an interactive impromptu workshop on the good and bad of mobile phone design.
• Darren Menachemson gave an interesting talk about designing out evil, complete with great graphs!
• Caronne Carruthers-Taylor gave an interesting presentation on her experiences with UX and design. Catch her presentation Change the world with UX: user experience in federal government on slideshare.
• Dean K held an interesting discussion about the No Clean Feed recent rally and opportunities to influence the decision makers. He also raised the idea that the solutions we propose need to provide a way for Stephen Conroy to save face.
• Nathanael Boehm introduced us to Resilient Nation Australia.

My presentation

I did a light hearted presentation on The Uncanny Valley:

Find out what else happened

Didn’t make it to BarCamp Canberra #2? You can:

• Watch the presentations on slideshare
• See the photos on flickr
• Find out who came to BarCamp Canberra #2
• Catch the twitter stream
• Visit the websites mentioned in the presentations, tagged in my delicious bookmarks

Thanks

Thanks to the unorganisers (Andrew Boyd, Stephen Collins, Simon Pascal Klein, Nathanael Boehm, Craig Thomler, Rae Buerckner, Darren Menachemson) for putting together a great event and the sponsors (acidlabs, Five Senses Coffee, UX Australia,
Keith Lang, Australian Anthill, Electric Shadows Bookshop).

Can’t wait for BarCamp Canberra #3!

From the Ada Lovelace Day pledge site:

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements.

I have many female friends who are doing wonderful work in the technology industry - too many to name but here’s a few Aussie females that I’ll like to sing out about.

• Donna - she is a great information architect, the Queen of Card Sorting and contributes much of her time to the web community. She’s always happy to share her knowledge and experience.
• Caronne - I love her passion for the work we do. She’s an extremely supportive person and manages to balance work, life, web community stuff and life with two teens. She does amazing stuff with advocating great user experiences in Government agencies that many people don’t hear about!
• Susan - one of the many challenging things of being a women is the ability to juggle multiple stressful components of our life. Susan is amazing - she loves the work she does and some how, manages to balance work, family, photography, blogging and web stuff!
• Viv - a special person I used to work with who is passionate about accessibility and user experience. She’s a solid rock for any team that she’s on and is always quietly working away in the background getting stuff done. It’s people like Viv who work so hard and never seem to get recognition for the hard work they do - so here’s my shout out to you Viv!
• Lisa - is amazing. She knows a lot of things about accessibility, usability and user experience. We have a very similiar approach to the work we do. She’s a very calming influence and I admire her passion for the work we do.

There are many other females out there who also doing great work (I’m looking at you Teresa, Amie, Suze, Lana!).

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

• The most popular screen reader is JAWS (74%), followed by Window-Eyes (23%), NVDA (8%) and VoiceOver (6%).
• 41% of screen reader users update their screen reader software after the release of a new version.
• 40% of screen reader users does some form of customisation.
• 28% of screen reader users sometimes uses the ’skip to content’ link with 38% having no preference about the wording.
• 52% navigate by headings.
• 53% find pop-up windows somewhat difficult to very difficult to use.
• Interestingly, if a web page contains a photo (of the White House in the survey), 80% of screen reader users prefer the use of “Photo of the White House” rather than “The White House” (some had no preferences in this regard).

The most telling finding is the conclusion from WebAIM:

Perhaps the most significant conclusion we can make from these survey results is that there is no typical screen reader user… This survey emphasizes that screen reader accessibility is about real people - and people that have diverse abilities and preferences.